


Can't move fast without breaking

by Tiiq



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Budding Love, Choking, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love Confessions, M/M, No Spoilers, Non-graphic depiction of injuries, Not Canon Compliant, Not-intended self-harm, Pancakes, Recovery, Slow Burn, internal bleeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-04 20:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10998630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiiq/pseuds/Tiiq
Summary: Personas are dangerous. Akechi knows this, Akira doesn't, yet Akechi forgets to mention these things before things start going dangerously downhill.





	1. Bloodbath

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally orphaned the first chapter under the name "Damage calculation" and I can't remove it now.
> 
> If you feel like you've read the first chapter before, sorry about it.
> 
> Anyways, this series started off with me thinking why physical attacks drain HP and it was a wild ride from there. Please save me.
> 
> Enjoy.

He never expected this to happen. His Persona reflected all physical damage. With one last Bloodbath, the Shadows opposing them turned to ash, and his friends turned to look happily at their leader.

 

  
That was when Joker collapsed.

 

 

\---

 

 

When he came to, he knew he was inside a Safe Room. He couldn’t feel most of his body, but perhaps that wasn’t as bad. The parts where he felt anything were dusted with only searing pain. He couldn’t keep his eyes more than just barely open when he saw someone in the corner of his eye.

  
He couldn’t make it out at first, but it turned out to be Crow, silently sipping on coffee Joker had prepared the other day. He immediately recognized the older boy by his overly princely, white outfit that looked nothing like what a Phantom Thief would wear. Lazily opening only one of his eyes to see Joker’s open eyes brought a weak smile to his worried face. “Oh… You’re awake. Thank goodness.”

  
“…” Joker couldn’t utter a word, his body wouldn’t let him. Crow got up and walked over to him, a hint of grief hanging on his lips.

  
“To think you were able to cause this much damage to yourself in just one fight…” Offering a shot of Takemi's potion from a medicine cup against his lips, Joker could only comply to the other man’s aid and downed the liquid with ease. “I don’t expect it to help too much though…”

  
The numbness slowly dissipated along with the pains. The raven-haired boy tried getting upright, but it was easier said than done. “Don’t push yourself, it will only make the wounds open up again…”

  
Joker gazed at Crow in confusion. “You mean you’ve never…?"

  
Silence ensued. After a while, Crow sighed and sat down next to the team leader. “Have you ever calculated the damage you take when you use a heavy or severe physical attack through your Persona? It is quite vicious.”

  
Thinking back at it, he remembered that it took roughly a quarter of his total health simply to use Bloodbath. He had never thought about it before, as he preferred magic over physical attacks any day. He left the other guys sit at the sidelines, so there wasn’t much physical damage dealt anyways. “It doesn’t just lower health, it causes actual, visible and physical damage if the move is strong enough, even to the user.”

  
“Does anyone else know?” That was the silent question Joker mustered.

  
“I thought you already knew this since you avoid having Skull or Fox on your team.”

Joker shook his head, and lazily scanned the area, looking for his mask that wasn’t already hiding his tired eyes. Seeing it on the table next to the now empty cup of coffee made his focus return to the Detective Prince. The carefree smile had flown back onto Crow's face. “I told everyone to go home and that I’d take care of you. Should we head back? You must be tired.”

  
Slowly nodding, he tried to get up again. It wasn’t without problems, but as soon as his back had straightened up and he was sitting next to his teammate, Crow stopped him. “How about I carry you home? I’m afraid you’ll be more hurt if you try walking yourself…”

  
Slipping the mask onto his leader's face, he lifted Joker up with little trouble.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Good evening!” Akechi greeted Sojiro, as he chimed through the door with Akira in his arms.

  
“Uh, what exactly is going on?” Sojiro stared as Akechi carried the other boy upstairs, gently placing him onto the bed.

  
Leaning from the staircase, Akechi could only reassure the café owner with a smile that the other boy was fine.

  
Having returned to the attic, Akechi found the other boy sitting silently, staring off into space. Akira’s grey eyes ended up glancing at Akechi's cognac ones that were nearly on the same level. Akechi had kneeled on the floor right in front of him, holding Akira’s hands in his own and petting them gently with his thumbs. “Are you hurting?”

  
“Not really…”

  
Akechi didn’t reply, and just focused on feeling the warmth of Akira’s skin. Well, that’s what he was going for but not taking off his gloves was probably an astonishingly dumb move on his part. It seemed that Akira had caught onto that as well, with a lazy smirk that wasn’tquite the same as Joker’s but that made chills run down his spine the same.

  
“… Goro.” Hearing Akira call him by his first name broke him from his momentary trance. He hadn’t heard Akira call him by his first name before, but he hadn’t really called the older boy out that often if it wasn’t in the Metaverse, and that was just the codename too. “Is it fine I call you that?”

  
“Ah, umm, yes, off course!” Slipping on the oh so obviously façade of a smile to hide his awkwardness was probably the worst thing he could have done, as this sent the detective internally grimacing for having used the same defense mechanism for like the millionth time.

  
Unable to form actually comprehensible sentences to follow up with, Goro's gaze fell. Akira, unbeknownst to Goro, found these moments when Goro couldn’t find words quite amusing, with his eyes unable to reach up to the bespectacled boy’s face, all thanks to the brunet’s embarrassment.

  
“Uh, I thought we should check if there were any physical marks left from the battle… So, how about it?” Not saying a word, Akira discarded the blazer and as his hands reached the hem of his turtleneck, he looked at Goro and smiled, teeth just barely showing. Goro squinted his eyes somewhat from the action, trying to analyze whether the move was supposed to hold flirty intent, or if Akira was secretly judging his teammate's somewhat questionable request.

  
The young delinquent kept up with his silence and as soon as nothing blocked the detective from seeing Akira’s upper body, it became clear. Even Akira was shocked to find scarred lines running rampant across his arms and, as the other boy quickly found, on his back too. Not asking for his consent, Goro’s hand reached to touch one of the many scars that had been haphazardly etched into his arm.

  
The younger boy showed no signs of this causing harm, but Goro asked regardless. Only shaking his head, the boy with curly hair assured the other that it was okay. Goro knew that light would come to it one day, that he too, had these similar lines all across his torso and upper arms. He slowly graced the scars on Akira’s skin, softly skimming from one to the next.

  
As he reached the team leader’s shoulder, he found himself one knee already resting on the bed, the other leaning against the frame of the bed. Goro’s arm immediately retracted as he noticed how close he had gotten while inspected Akira, hiding his mouth behind his gloved hand and avoiding eye contact in the coy manner Akira had grown quite accustomed to.

  
“Goro, it’s fine.” Akira reassured as his hand gently reached the detective's hand and with approximately the same precision as he would snatch the mask from an enemy to 'show him its true form', moved Goro’s hand to the side to look the flustered boy in the eyes. “Do you not believe me?”

  
“That’s not what I meant…” Ready to give up, Goro’s head fell to Akira’s yet untouched collarbone. It wasn’t long before Goro’s arms followed and as they reached their final destination, around Akira’s shoulders, was the brunet's head lifted next to the other boy’s curly mess that was his hair.

  
Nuzzling his nose into the other’s russet hair, Akira couldn’t help but close his eyes and sigh in relief. The air blown away with the sigh tickled Goro’s back of neck and he lightly shuddered from surprise. The delinquent's hand played with the stray hairs that rested against the side of Goro’s neck, bringing him solace.

 

“It’s fine… You’re home, you’re safe… I’m here for you…”


	2. Medigolaon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akira should really ask Goro to explain everything, but doesn't.

Goro had asked Akira to join him in Mementos. They decided to explore deeper together to find a couple new masks for Joker. Without Morgana to drive them around the trip was mostly just the two talking and fighting the occasional Shadows. Even that they hadn’t fought all that much that day, Crow seemed more than just drained, and he coughed every now and then.

  
“Want to rest?”

  
“No, no, let’s keep going.” Joker decided to keep a closer eye on the other boy, even though he denied any problems.

  
However he didn’t need to keep a much closer eye for long, as after a few short battles, blood started leaving the brunet’s lips with the coughs. Luckily they had just reached a waiting room.

  
Grabbing his teammate by his shoulders, Joker commanded: “Fess up.”

  
“I can’t tell who’s the detective here, haha…”

  
“Crow…” Joker groaned, he was too tired for this.

  
“I understand…” He cleared his strained throat before continuing. “You know how I mentioned that physical moves are harmful to your body. Well you see, Almighty attacks have nearly the same effect, except it’s not as apparent.”

  
“You should’ve just told me. I don’t want you dying on me.” Trying to laugh it off, Crow nearly choked on his own blood again. “Let’s just go home.”

  
Holding the brunet closer, Joker used his Goho-M and they left the dark labyrinth behind.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Akira, would you— What is this?” Sojiro stopped mid-sentence as he saw his guest writhing in pain, his cough getting rapidly worse. This time it was Goro who was clinging to Akira. “Lay him down, I’ll call an ambulance.”

  
Goro found himself pitiful at the state, eyes glistening from tears as his body tried to find some way to get fresh air in. Akira helped him undo Goro’s tie to help the miserable boy in whatever way possible. The brunet’s hands gripping tightly at the other boy’s shirt to feel like something that wasn’t pain that was making his lungs collapse on themselves.

  
Somewhere in his oxygen-deprived brain, Goro thought about how grand it would be if the ambulance came crashing through the door, like he had overheard an elderly couple joke about in the café before. It was around there when Goro’s consciousness faded away.

 

 

\---

 

 

As he came to, he could see from the corner of his eye Akira with his hands buried in his scalp. The sounds he was trying not to let out were of choking back tears and whimpering in despair, a feeling the detective knew from experience.

  
In his mind, Goro had devised a witty remark to get Akira’s attention, but all that he got out was yet another cough. At the sound, Akira shook away from the bed he had knelt in front of. “You shouldn’t speak.”

  
He responded to the bespectacled boy with a smile which essentially said 'I don’t need words with you'. Goro couldn’t tell whether Akira had stalked him before or if they had just grown that close in the short time they had spent together, because it felt like his words were getting through.

  
Goro’s mind quickly lost the concept of time as the two merely gazed at each other in silence. How long he’d have to wait to get better didn’t matter. The fact their plans to celebrate the most recent change of heart would be delayed by a long while was unimportant.

  
All that mattered was that the two could share the mutual silence and forget about the world around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: "Please don't spam Medigolaon, Akechi doesn't have that much SP to start with."
> 
> Originally I wasn't able to get serious with this chapter, because I wrote that "Joker didn't have the nerves to deal with Crow's occasional bullshit" when he was joking about who was the detective.


	3. Samarecarm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even though Goro might have always been more knowledgeable about the Metaverse, there have always been some things he had never known.

Akira wondered how long it had been since that day. The day Goro was hospitalized, the day he stroked the unconscious boy’s hand throughout the trip to the hospital.

He sat alone in the stark white hall, waiting. Twirling his hair between his fingers, he waited for the door in front of him to open. School had already ended for the year, but he always came to see him whenever he could. Arriving always just a bit early to praise Goro for doing so well when the door would open. Seeing him regain his ability to speak more and more like he used to, never failed to bring a smile to his face. Because he hadn’t sustained much damage to his vocal cords, he was making a remarkably fast recovery.

“Oh, there you are.” Seeing the brunet’s peek from the doorway got Akira immediately onto his feet, wrapping his arms around Goro’s upper body. Running his hand through Akira’s curly locks had become his standard reaction to this habit the two shared.

 

“Pancakes?”

“Pancakes.”

 

 

\---

 

 

Even though the two could have gone to any place for pancakes, there was just one thing that Goro loved. And that was Akira’s pancakes.

The detective had deducted it some time earlier that Akira had been practicing with making pancakes before he first invited the boy to come eat them at LeBlanc. His pancakes were growing exponentially tastier by the day.

It had been quite recently that Akira had heard Goro talk about his past and of all the scars that nearly mirrored the team leader’s. The bespectacled young man had asked him about what he wanted and didn’t force him to tell more than he could muster.

Seeing Akira zoning out behind the counter as he looked at the door with tired eyes caused the brunet to finally snap somewhere. Ignoring his suave character for a while, he reached his hand to grab a tuft of Akira’s hair between his index finger and thumb like he had seen him do time and time again. Akira snapped back to reality, gazing at the enthralled brunet that was busy figuring if the raven-haired boy ever brushed his hair or if it was like this naturally.

“Your pancakes are growing cold, dear Prince.”

“Oh, right.” He had never figured out why Akira often called him by something like that, whether he was trying to be witty or affectionate, Goro was at a loss. Stuffing his mouth with this lukewarm dessert, he decided for the moment that it was probably just him trying to mess with him.

 

  
\---

 

 

“I think I should be going by now…”

“Don’t.” Grabbing Goro by the wrist when he tried waving his hand to reason, Akira snickered slightly.

“No, I really…” The longer those grey eyes kept boring into Goro’s head, the weaker he felt. Whether Akira, leaning nearly completely over the counter, had lost himself to the maroon pools, also known as Goro’s eyes, was a mystery for another day. “... If I stay, will it make you happy?”

That lazy, nearly half-assed nod he did before sparking a toothy grin at Goro, the brunet didn’t couldn’t form words to identify the feeling, and just had to feel the shivers slowly creeping down his spine. Absolutely maddeningly slow.

“But why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The bespectacled boy probably had something very specific in mind, but why of all times was Goro’s brain betraying him, making connecting the dots way harder than he imagined.

Having dragged the older boy with him to the attic, Akira gazed at Goro in near disbelief. Was the detective that dense? Akira’s gaze started shifting away for the other, now only giving rare sideway glances at the brunet.

Goro's wreck of a mind was too busy trying to organize his thoughts, with his mouth behind his hand as he thought, looking down at the wooden floorboards. The moment their silence had settled was when it finally came together for the detective.

“Oh…”

“You finally realized?” As Goro’s eyes came to meet the grey ones hidden behind the glasses, the corners of Akira’s lips turned upwards. With a firm nod, Goro stepped closer, his head falling in freefall onto Akira’s shoulder.

“Did you plan something else?”

“Nothing.” His fingers beginning to knead with Goro’s, just murmured softly: “This’ll just be time for us. Whatever we’ll do is up to you…”

“… You didn’t plan this far ahead, did you?”

“You got me, detective.” Goro’s silvery laugher rang in the younger boy’s ear. “Do you have any plans?”

Upon returning the question, Goro's neck finally snapped back upright. “Not yet. We can plan this, hmm, special time together.”

“I think we’re missing some important steps here…”

Without a need for words, Goro’s fingers left the warmth of Akira’s, and instead focused on taking his glasses off. Daringly reaching for Goro’s chin, Akira did not hesitate to greet the other boy’s lips with his own for just one chaste kiss.

“Umm, Akira…” Having looked away in embarrassment, Goro only heard Akira hum as a reply. “I never thought, that I would… Umm, finally you…”

Goro couldn’t come to finish a single sentence he tried. Whether the words came out sounding wrong or cliché, that made him stop midway, was something Akira wished he’d know. “There’s no need for formalities, Goro.”

“Oh, indeed.” Even with his hand hiding most of his face, Akira found some secret amusement in looking at Goro’s widened eyes which darted around, trying to hide the clear embarrassment. His eyes, while not focused on Akira's, finally came to a halt, slowly closing. “Akira, I love you.”

“I love you too.” With a swift movement, Akira’s arms wrapped around Goro.

 

Having finally found a place to belong after all this, he finally gave a reply to what the bespectacled boy had said before: “Akira, I’m home…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end.
> 
>  
> 
> The original plan for the confession was for Akira to ask Goro to join him in Inokashira Park and something something, fireworks probably, that-extremely-cliché-anime-confession.jpg. But then I remembered, the school year ends in March in Japan. I had to check whether there was anything worth celebrating, nothing came up. So it was just them staying at LeBlanc.
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
